Second world war
Horrifyingly beautiful – but I will never watch it again: Painted Bird review
The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…
Bombs over London: V for Victory, by Lissa Evans, reviewed
Lissa Evans has been single-handedly rescuing the Hampstead novel from its reputation of being preoccupied by pretension and middle-class morality.…
Looking at Barnett Freedman makes me weep at the government's dismal graphics
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
The joy of eating birdseed
Rather like unpacking after a holiday, when you take unworn clothes from the case still neatly folded because the occasion…
The best podcasts for all your corona-gardening needs
The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched…
Letters: We must sing again
Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before…
Michaela Coel's dazzling finale reminds me of Philip Roth: I May Destroy You reviewed
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
Letters: Why Hugh Dowding deserves a statue
Police relations Sir: As a former Met Police officer, with a similar background to Kevin Hurley, I was surprised how…
Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the new cultural rebels
We won the Battle of Britain – just
We won the Battle of Britain – just
A true story that never feels true: Resistance reviewed
Resistance stars Jesse Eisenberg and tells the true story of how mime artist Marcel Marceau helped orphaned Jewish children to…
Is baking and watching Netflix really comparable to being bombed?
Sentimentalising the Blitz is hardly ‘Blitz spirit’
From ‘divine Caesar’ to Hitler’s lapdog – the rise and fall of Benito Mussolini
Mussolini dreamed of a new Roman empire and dominion over the Mediterranean. Two decades later he was hanging by his feet in a public square, as Ian Thomson relates
Isolation forces us to work out what really matters
In tough times, people often discover their dauntlessness
Riveting documentary about a remarkable man: Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War reviewed
First shown on BBC Scotland, Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War (BBC4, Wednesday) was the documentary equivalent of…
Did Britain commit a war crime in Dresden? A conversation
A conversation between Sinclair McKay and A.N. Wilson
Understated, unashamedly patriotic and heartbreaking: The Windermere Children reviewed
One of the many astonishing things about the BBC2 drama The Windermere Children (Monday) was that the real-life story it…
Two books that made me forget everything else
Gstaad I’ve been hitting the books rather hard lately, the ritzy-glitzy crowd having gone the way of natural snow. There’s…
A soldier’s legacy: how a baby’s cry saved a family
It was early evening on Sunday 6 August 1944. The Allies’ bloody struggle to liberate Normandy from the Nazis had…
A solid costume drama but Dame Helen has been miscast: Catherine the Great reviewed
It’s possibly not a great sign of a Britain at ease with itself that the historical character most likely to…
Enjoyably contrived: BBC1’s Baptiste reviewed
What’s the best way to start a six-part thriller? The answer, it seems, is to have a bloke of a…
Like getting Banksy to repaint the Sistine Chapel: Sky Atlantic’s Das Boot reviewed
‘I know, let’s repaint the Sistine Chapel. But this time we’ll get it done by Banksy.’ Perhaps this wasn’t the…
The man who never cried
It was odd listening to Jim Al-Khalili being interviewed on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning rather than the other way…
Intelligent, unfussy, literate – the West End needs more plays like this: Switzerland reviewed
I know nothing about Patricia Highsmith. The acclaimed American author wrote the kind of Sunday-night crime thrillers that put me…
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
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